Billy had never been any good at science.

His equations were okay, the math mostly right, but the chemical side of things never worked out for him.

Frustrated at the disasters the boy kept producing, the teacher set a simple task - crystals in a dish - for his exams.

“Even billy can’t mess that up!” The teacher snickered in the teachers lounge.

But somehow, despite only topping up water in a small dish that sat in the sun, something miraculous happened.

It grew a glittering tiny face. Then a featureless torso.

Every day saw a thumb-sized limb grow on the crystal girl that mesmerised billy.

He added a scrap of fabric for privacy, as the tiny girl outgrew her petri dish.

The teacher was too busy to notice the crystal that sat in the dish, staring out the window at the world. Billy thought no-one would believe him, and kept her secret; behind a plant pot…

Come the day of exams, billy had written his papers and gone to retrieve his project for the teacher, but the dish was empty.

“She was just there!” Billy said.

“She?” The teacher questioned.

Then the plant pot moved. Everyone turned to see the crystal girl who now wore a dolls dress and waved at the teacher as she climbed the leaves and vanished though the window.

Billy searched the school grounds for weeks, as did most of his class. But despite his best efforts, he had nothing to hand in.

“Sorry Billy. C- is the best that I can give.”

The teacher shrugged. “Maybe if you had a crystal that wasn’t cursed with life and ran away you could’ve got a B.”

So billy went back to normality, often wondering where his creation went…